#Coordinated transport drops: Where are they?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lofty forge
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I have yet to see anyone else in high level team lobbies utilize transports en mass to drop large forces behind enemy lines. Why would that be?

Slightly unrelated, where are the hover and sea transport units? Personally, I'd love to be able to siege a beachfront WW2 style with a bunch of boats loaded with grunts.

How do you folks utilize transports?

undone thicket
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sea/hover transports were removed after just being wonky & my exploits as well see...
https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1075484541919166614

generally I think it's because transport AI is finicky and not reliable and just hard to execute, and AA shuts it down easily.

8v8 has much more coverage, but we've seen some dropping tactics in 1v1 & but generally its hard to coordinate & also hard to do the thing solo.

fighters completely shut it down, and people just use bombers if they think they have a chance to surprise enemy as with more players you might hit multiple bases instead of one greatly.

sly lantern
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Most transport usage I see is moving commander and t2 bots around faster. I've seen a few centurion drops and those are cool. I also use them coordinating with the air player to drop mammoths on your front and that hits hard.

lofty forge
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what about repurposing the drone carrier tech? instead of drones just have units walk into their designated spot when loading/unloading

deft shale
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the Nostradamus Maneuver is something like what you're describing; massed T2 transport drops of beamer turrets. The few things letting it work are: the eco player spending a lolcannon worth of mass on it, Armada T2 transports having an EMP beam able to disable AA for subsequent air units, and a huge fighter overmatch

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as for simpler drops, I've seen centurion drops attempted repeatedly; usually die to fighters or just units. Can't drop close to base bc aa will shoot down transports in a few hits.

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other than that Commando drops bypass the AA issue because commandos don't die when their transport does

gleaming crescent
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people would probably use transports more if they worked better + and how they work in supcom forged alliance. drops were super normal there (helps that t1 air transport could pick 6-7 t1 units there)

digital torrent
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they are good, i think i will use them with snipers for defence

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offensive only like fiend and mammoth drop seem good

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jag drop or flak truck drop

spark wing
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And at that point when they dont bombing is better

tropic jewel
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I noticed that T2 transports sometimes refuse to unload (or pick up) all units. I guess if it was more reliable it would make such strat more worthwhile

spark wing
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It refused to pick Up units out of its mass range

tropic jewel
# spark wing Hmmm?

I mean, I have 4 pawns. I do area pick up. It will sometimes pick up 1 or 2 or 3. It looks like it gets stuck after picking up and hovers over the unit. If I do a space-move it will unstuck and will proceed to picking up the rest of the units. Same thing with unload - sometimes it unloads only 1, sometimes few. Very unreliable

digital torrent
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if you do unload drag you need to space them out enough then the dots will turn orange/red to yellow

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then you can unload in a manual formation

spark wing
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I didnt know u Can pick more stuff with trans i see ur point now

tropic jewel
lean fog
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That's not quite correct t2 tends to have 8 slots try to pick up ticks you can transport 8 ticks 🙂 if it makes sense idk .....

digital torrent
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i prefer the t1 transport, picking up and dropping multiple sucks

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unless you want a tankier transport for something important

vast sequoia
lean fog
finite nacelle
austere zodiac
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this is just a side tangent but I saw a message saying there were hover transports? what did they look like?

sage tartan
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Transports being clunky and very slow to unload (or outright refusing) is definitely one of the biggest reasons for this.
I feel like they need a rework to not be so fussy about dropping on other units. They seem to expect a football field of empty space around their drop zone to function. I'd much rather that the T2 transports simply dropped their passengers in one go, and let their unit footprint just push them apart as units usually do if colilding on land.

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Alternatively, have them drop their units like a bomber drops it's bombs. Space the units out in a little four long line.

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Would look cool, and be quick and effortless to deploy.

tropic jewel
pulsar glen
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Tbh if I remember correctly you could set up a shipping line with transports in FAF. It would be pretty cool if you could do that in BAR aswell like imagine winning a sea and instantly opening a new front there with a transport line from factories, logistically it would be also quite interesting to protect because you’d have to set up aa to protect it

tame lily
austere zodiac
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well that was a lot of info to take in. hope it gets patched eventually and re added. the idea of cargo ships or hover transports sounds like a good idea, especially since there are a couple of massive water maps in BAR

finite nacelle
digital torrent
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The t2 transport is more tedious to do a speedy drop than the t1 AFAIK. Cause you can't line drag drop multiple pasengers

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You have to shift click unload to make it unload without panicking around

sage tartan
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Yeah. T1 is pretty easy once you know how to use the line drop unload. (Although still not perfect, since they can still fail if they don't like the drop zone, and just hold onto the unit.)
T2 transports are a real pain. I was practicing it recently in a skirmish, by abducting allied AI units and taking them somewhere more useful. But it's a real chore to get them back on the ground even in ideal circumstances.

midnight aurora
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I think it would be nicer if transport planes just dropped the units without landing. It would solve a lot of issues with unloading multiple units.

spark wing
finite nacelle
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Op transport juggling like in...certain games...is definitely a strong argument to not allow teleporting in or out of transports, though i do wonder if/how much ascensions/descension could be accelerated without leading to problems, particularly for t2 trans

tall ore
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i think as long as loading isn't instant it wouldnt be too bad

spark wing
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Its more about unloading than loading

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Imagine čom flys at u and insta unloads high ts players cant defend it normálny imagine what happens

finite nacelle
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Probably not, but cmthe effort is put in to make sure units are modelled while being transported, i assume the core team wouldn't want units just teleporting onto the ground. Also, air units in general ascending+descending has a lot of jank to it. I have no idea if "altitude adjustment speed" is any sort of stat they have, but speeding that up across the board could just generally make air interactions work better

finite nacelle
finite nacelle
spark wing
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?

finite nacelle
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The time to unload might occasionally have an effect on commdrops, but not generally. Even less if ascension/descension was just accelerated rather than making unload an instant teleport

digital torrent
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in broodwar loadig is instant, unloading takes like 0.8-1 sec? per unit

finite nacelle
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Iirc it's the same as sc2, so it varies by transport, but there's no delay on the first unit unloaded, just a brief "re-unload delay" between units unloaded, which leads to silly bs of unloading a unit so it can fire once, loading it again while the unit reloads+dodging midair projectiles in the process, then unloading again from transport so the unit can fire again when reload finishes

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I remember something loosely similar being done with reavers in brood war? though not quite the same

digital torrent
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you can do that in broodwar but reaver has a 1 sec delay on shooting that was balanced ages ago

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done by protoss vs terran (zealots to aggro hits for reaver), can also be done terran vs protoss (drop tanks vs goons)

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goons kill dropship quite fast so it's only for gosu plp

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oh also pvp shuttle micro

finite nacelle
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Sc2 immortals fire effectively instantly with a longish reload, and warp prisms have some range on their pickup, so that combo just obliterates any army that can't kill the prism

digital torrent
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i think it's way dumber in sc2 because there are more core units that can't shoot up

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and more beefier units

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in broodwar theres no core ranged unit that can't shoot up

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in broodwar it's this game of chicken and prediction. shuttle juggling reavers is very risky vs goons

finite nacelle
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We should probably get back on-topic, with a transition of:

most normal units in bar can't shoot up effectively, but it's pretty easy to throw up a thistle on the frontline if transport shenanigans were easier and someone was attempting them, and dedicated aa units are far stronger at killing air than in those games, so i'm not sure where the line of transport efficacy should be drawn

sage tartan
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There's no need for instant "teleportation" drops. Just have T2 transports slow and reduce altitude like normal, and then release all four units at once rather than awkwardly flying around trying to find a football field of free space for each of them one at a time.

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Units are already perfectly capable of squeezing themselves into a singularity without issues, if you leave them going to a rally point. So letting the transport do the same and have them just push out from each other, should work fine yes? Unless there's some very specific technical issue?

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Also, if transports actually being functional without being a guaranteed death trap for their passengers would be OP, whilst obviously relevant, then that kinda feels more like an issue with the rest of the balance, than truly being the transports fault. You can air drop a T3 army in SupCom outside someone's base, and it's perfectly possible for the attack to do good damage and make a worthwhile trade, but still be far from game ending.

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Probably comes down to bases in BAR being built like houses of cards laced with gunpowder, that just keep getting taller and more fragile over the course of the game. You do any damage at all, and it's all gone.

finite nacelle
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Nobody was saying transports shouldn't be more functional, nor did anyone say dropoffs needed to be instantaneous

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There are dozens of possibilities for how to make transports "work" without teleportation, and some could be the right or wrong solution purely based on the numbers used

digital torrent
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Current trans speed seems fine but t2 should be able to drop at its current rate without always having to find pathing

sage tartan
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"a strong argument to not allow teleporting in or out of transports"
I was just replying to that part, and the other comments mentioning it, agreeing that there's no need for an unsatisfying teleport when a simultaneous (or bomber like) drop could be done.
Just maintain the need to lower down first like normal, and it maintains that window to react to transports, and leaves com drops at exactly the same power they are currently.

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It theoretically still leaves the dropped units vulnerable to splash damage once landed, until they've spread out, but that actually seems like a reasonable balancing aspect, to dissuade from landing near ground defences, whilst still being less punishing than losing 75% of your force because the transports are refusing to unload the rest.

abstract plank
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Sorry for being a bit out of the discussion, but recently tried doing a supcom style t2 airdrop to the enemy island and was astonished by how clunky and overall difficult to work with the transport system is. Do y'all see a transport overhaul incoming or is this just a limitation of the spring engine?

Also, it's difficult for me as a non-developer to see why a supcom like ferry command is not implemented. Most likely there is a specific reason for this, but was just wondering why

finite nacelle
finite nacelle
# sage tartan "a strong argument to not allow teleporting in or out of transports" I was just ...

I feel like allowing units to be dropped directly on top of each other could lead to some weird abuse with stacking indirect fire units on mountaintops or something, but maybe not. The bomber-like drop idea i'm more of a fan of, and just have the transport do a check of whether the "landing zone" was free when it starts descending to drop, so it prevents deliberate janky unit stacking, but doesn't get hopelessly confused/give up on trying to drop its current cargo

paper dragon
finite nacelle
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that is one of the widgets i was referring to, yes

paper dragon
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Kk.
For me the ideas brought into it are getting better and better.

Next thing up is that a T2 transport is going to be halfway "intelligent" so it can pick up some units along the way and drop them in a time saving order.

Perhaps I over value this widget a bit, but for me it is a game changer for transportation.

finite nacelle
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making the area unload command actually efficient may or may not be possible on a widget level

paper dragon
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@lean fog

I had a chat with Ramthis today, it is possible. Even for allied units, even with a marker for the loading and unloading position.

But it's not on the top of the list. Right now the multi unit transportation is a top priority. And there was a recent break through!

But he has way more insights than I could ever have.

lean fog
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yes that's right robert but as I said I want to do bugfixing refactoring etc first and I think then the topic dropzone loading zone is an interesting thing and yes in the minimal version I could imagine that it can work with a pingmarker or something like that

inland drift
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A seaplane transport aircraft would be cool

lofty forge
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yeh actually

long yacht
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I think one of the problems is also not being able to load multiple units in the transport, which makes big drops very inefficient resource-wise.

mighty hull
paper dragon
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And the transporter AI created by Ramthis can actually handle T2 transporters better and better.
It can now pick up multiple units and drop each one where it wanted to go.

lofty forge
paper dragon
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jup

lofty forge
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... which one?